A STUDY OF DYSTOPIAN VISION IN

GEORGE ORWELL’S NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR

Project submitted to the THIRUVALLUVAR UNIVERSITY
In the partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree of
BACHELOR OF ARTS IN ENGLISH
By

SASI PRAKASH.P
(Reg. No: 10520U04084)
Under the Supervision of
Mrs.INDRADEVI M.A, M.Ed, M.Phil
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

UNDER GRADUATE AND RESEARCH DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

PERIYAR GOVT ARTS COLLEGE
(AFFILIATED TO THIRUVALLUVAR UNIVERSITY)
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Table of Contents
Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Dystopian Vision: Power and
the Individual

Introduction

The Dystopian Nightmare:

Ideological and Repressive State Apparatuses:

Explaining the society of Nineteen Eighty-Four
Dystopia and Utopia

The Last Man :

Conclusion: The Last Man Resurrected

 Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Dystopian Vision:
Power and the Individual Abstract:

Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is by many known for, and consequently discussed in terms
of, its “predictions” of the future, and its political satire. This thesis does not aim at discussing
Orwell’s political ambitions, nor the alleged “prophecy” of the novel. Rather, this thesis
focuses on and discusses the dystopian nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which is
characterised by totalitarianism and its power discourse. The novel’s society is emphasised by
O’Brien’s statement of “the boot stamping on a human face.” I have used Foucault’s theory
on Pastoral power to explain the power discourse of the Party. Furthermore, I have explained
the society of Nineteen Eighty-Four by Lois Althusser’s concepts of Ideological State
Apparatuses and Repressive State Apparatuses. Goldstein’s Book serves as a handbook for
describing and unveiling the blunt mysteries of the novel, and in this thesis works in tandem
with Foucault and Althusser to disclose the dystopian qualities of the novel. A major
characteristic of Nineteen Eighty-Four is the Telescreen and the omnipresent surveillance,
which is similar to Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon as discussed in Foucault’s Birth of the
Prison. In this context, I have discussed Nineteen Eighty-Four as a Panoptic society, a society
which functions as a disciplinary institution that gathers knowledge, which works reciprocally
with power. The Panopticon, totalitarianism and the power discourse of the Party have great
effects on the individual. The final aspect of this thesis consequently focuses on the Party’s
negation of the individual, and Winston’s struggle to liberate himself and sustain his
autonomy in a society devoid of human contact, and where the great masses of individuals are
mere automatons shaped by the Party to serve the demise of humanity. In this horrific image
of a loss of autonomy, an all-pervading surveillance, and the abuse of power, the warnings
Orwell asserted in Nineteen Eighty-Four are growing increasingly nearer as we are entering a
world characterised by its escalating discourse of technology, where individuals are alienated
from each other by the use of media and an ever-increasing surveilled world after 9/11.
 Introduction

In the aftermath of 9/11, the attack on the World Trade Center in New York, a “Harris
Poll” has revealed that a majority of Americans approve of increased surveillance, but fear the
consequences on privacy. Today’s society is characterised by an escalating use of technology,
which is also applied to redefine surveillance. Cameras observe the streets, restaurants, shops,
and in more extreme cases, your very homes. New technologies in surveillance techniques can
pierce the heart of any organisation, or any individual. They are there to make you feel safe,
or are they? Could it not be that the very presence of surveillance will make you conscious of
the gaze that is always upon you? Wherever you go in the streets of any larger city, cameras
can watch your every step. London is currently the capital with most surveillance cameras in
the world. “[T]here are at least 500,000 cameras in the city, and one study showed that in a
single day a person could expect to be filmed 300 time Surveillance protects you and keep
you safe from an ever growing more violent world. But at the same time, they also make sure
you do not engage in any acts that may be deemed deviant or threatening. The protective gaze
ensures a consciousness of your actions, and your overall demeanour. While standing in front
of a camera, or walking into a fully surveilled bank, one may develop an explicit acuteness of
bodily movements, not otherwise discernible. Surveillance can create a certain edginess
amongst people. Their uncertainty of what is being recorded and what is deemed
inappropriate is part of what keeps you conscious of yourself when observed. The other part is
the promise of punishment for the threatening behaviour that can be recorded by the cameras.
The threat of punishment is accepted as necessary in society. Foreign and domestic threats
must be dealt with to protect the nation and the citizens. Free speech is an accepted and
appreciated law in Western countries. All actions, however, are not free, nor is speech in some
cases. Threatening actions and speech are threats to the security of the nation, and thus cannot
be tolerated.
The foreign threat of the West is epitomized by the presence of Osama Bin Laden. He
is alleged to have been the architect behind 9/11. He is also held up as the reason why the
world is currently engaged in a “war on terror.” During this war, all must be scrutinized.

Security has increased in airports and most other public places. “According to the Fourth
Amendment, the state cannot search a person or property without first acquiring a warrant
based on probable cause.” After 9/11, however, the American Patriot Act gives the
government “authority to intercept wire, oral, and electronic communications relating to
terrorism [and the] authority to intercept wire, oral, and electronic communications relating to
computer fraud and abuse offenses. “The old norm of innocent until proven otherwise is
threatened under such laws. The war against terror is most likely a perpetual war. It is a war
with no clear winner, nor can there ever be one. The war on terror signifies the colliding
forces of two ideologies standing on each side of a great gulf emphasized by a clear notion of
“us” versus “them.”
George Orwell envisioned such a war in his last novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four. We
recognize Osama Bin Laden as representative for the character of Goldstein. “Goldstein and
his heresies will live forever. Every day, at every moment, they will be defeated, discredited,
ridiculed, spat upon – and yet they will always survive.”5 Goldstein is the excuse to wage a
war. More importantly, he is an excuse for which the state must put in place precautions and
procedures to defend against the threat. In “the war on terror”, Osama Bin Laden is never
found, but he is always defeated; but even in his defeat we can never assume we are safe from
him, and hence precautions such as more surveillance, and more “misinformation” regarding
threats on the western world, are incorporated into our daily lives. We experience a situation
of “us” versus “them,” and where there are only a few great ideologies, which are emphasized
by “ours” and “theirs.”
The society of Nineteen Eighty-Four is a society of few, but consequently great,
ideological powers. Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty Four as a warning against such tendencies.
He argued against his fears of totalitarianism in such grand ideologies, but he also warned
against a technological society where all would be victims of surveillance, homogeny and the
loss of autonomy. According to William Staples, such a society is descending upon us. We
seem to be entering a state of permanent visibility where attempts to control and shape our
behaviour, in essence our bodies, are accomplished not so much by the threat of punishment
and physical force but by the act of being watched – continuously, anonymously, and
automatically.

War and what it could do to the people. Now that the Cold War is over, and the year 1984 is
in the past, his nightmare society still remains as vivid as ever before in the wake of a new,
never-ending “war on terror”.
Big Brother, the Telescreen, the Thought Police and the deceptive war, are all to be
found in the world in the present day. Big Brother and the Telescreens are emphasized by the
ever-increasing surveillance. Thought Crime is emphasized by those who are believed to
constitute a threat to the state, and who are consequently punished for the ostensible crime
they are committing. You are guilty until proven otherwise. The Orwellian war against
Eurasia, or East Asia, is emphasized by the present-day war on Iraq, which was initiated on
false premises, such as the war Oceania is engaged in. The war also epitomizes the superiority
of ideology over ideology.
Orwell’s dystopian vision is thus closer than ever. In the analysis that follows, this
thesis acknowledges that Orwell’s base for the dystopian society of Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a
society driven by power. Orwell’s conception of power goes hand in hand with the concepts
of power created by Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser’s concepts of how power is diffused
throughout society, and Althusser’s concepts of State Apparatuses are fruitful in describing
this Orwellian landscape.
The Orwellian landscape is identified by despair, an utmost bleakness, and loss of
hope. For the sake of contrast, I compare Nineteen Eighty-Four with Brave New World,
another literary work on a dystopian society. This comparison of two dystopian concepts
gives more depth to the understanding of Orwell’s design of a dystopian society.
The Telescreen, in Nineteen Eighty-Four is reminiscent of Jeremy Bentham’s design
for what he titled “the Panopticon.” This comparison is interesting for two reasons. The first
being that it illustrates society as a prison and thus the dystopian characteristics are
illuminated by the despairing institution a penitentiary must be. Secondly, it illustrates his
genius as a political satirist, as well as his practical imagination in architecting a device so all
pervasive, effective and horrific.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a satirical novel. “Extrapolation is the key. The satirist
criticizes repulsive tendencies in his society by providing an imaginative picture of the logical
outcome of those tendencies.” Winston Smith is the requisite satirist point of view in Nineteen
Eighty-Four, the one who shows us the underlying vices of society.
The satirist is thus a kind of self-appointed guardian of standards, ideals and truth; of
moral as well as aesthetic values. He is a man… who takes upon himself to correct
censure and ridicule the follies and vices of society and thus bring contempt and
derision upon aberrations from a desirable and civilized norm. Thus satire is a form of
protest, a sublimation and refinement of anger and indignation.
Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four as a warning, and as a protest, against the tendencies that
troubled him. It is in this sense that Nineteen Eighty-Four is a powerful satirist novel, which
does not, because of the genre, aim at predicting the future, but rather warns us about the
dangers of a world Orwell is showing us.
 To examine this I have selected three broad aspects to focus on and discuss. The first
part focuses on examining Nineteen Eighty-Four’s dystopian characteristics. My focus here
has been to discuss the impact of totalitarianism on society. To focus this discussion, I have
further selected four more succinct parts to emphasize the importance of various components
of the dystopian society. First I discuss power and totalitarianism as the overarching elements
of the dystopia. Here I have used Michel Foucault’s theory of “Pastoral Power” to examine
and accentuate the power discourse of the Party. Secondly, I discuss the perpetual war
Oceania is engaged in as another pillar in the base that constitutes the dystopian society.
Thirdly, I explain the character of power in the society of Oceania by using Louis Althusser’s
concepts of Ideological State Apparatuses and Repressive State Apparatuses. Finally, I
describe the many characteristics of Oceania in comparison with Brave New World. In this
section, I also discuss the dystopia and utopia Winston struggles with.

In the second chapter I further rely on Foucault, and his analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s
Panopticon, and how that is applicable to describe the society of Nineteen Eighty-Four as a
Panoptic Society. This chapter explains the society of Oceania as analogous to a prison where
technology is invading the private sphere.

The final chapter discusses Winston Smith as “the Last Man” and the death of the
liberal individual. Subsequently this chapter also discusses the implications of Orwell’s
dystopia on the individual. Humanity battles the collective’s drowning of individual cries.
Because of his individuality, Winston embarks on a quest to further increase his individual
enlightenment, but also on a quest to destroy the oppression of the Party. I have therefore
discussed Winston and his individuality, his rebellion, his ambiguous relationship with
O’Brien, and his ultimate failure at the hands of O’Brien. Here I have also discussed the
implications of Winston’s surrender, and how that defeat is important today as it reminds us
that even though Winston failed, and totalitarianism thus reigns supreme, his legacy is
fulfilled by other literary characters.
The Dystopian Nightmare

Nineteen Eighty-Four is characterised by its dystopian nightmare. Orwell’s portrayal

of the many vivid, but shocking, dystopian characteristics strikes the reader with terror. As
Fredric Warburg wrote in “Publisher’s Report” in 1948, “[Nineteen Eighty-Four] is amongst
the most terrifying books I have ever read.”1 But as Julian Symons expresses in “Times
Literary Supplement” in 1949, “[t]he picture of society in Nineteen Eighty-Four has an awful
plausibility which is not present in other modern projections of our future.”2 The first part of
this chapter concerns itself with explaining the base for the dystopian society, where I have
identified three parts that constitute the dystopian society: power, totalitarianism and war. I
then direct my focus on explaining the society of Nineteen Eighty-Four by using Louis
Althusser’s theory on Ideological State Apparatuses and Repressive State Apparatuses. The
last aspect of this chapter emphasizes Nineteen Eighty-Four’s dystopian characteristics in
comparison with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It also discusses the dystopian, but also
utopian, qualities in Orwell’s novel.
George Orwell’s societal vision in Nineteen Eighty-Four is characterized by the
despotic power regime, the Party. The Party’s most recognizable characteristic is the
totalitarian paradigm personified by its dictator Big Brother. The Party further exercises
totalitarianism through its quest and use of power. One definition of power by Edgar and
Sedgewick states that “Most usually, power is taken to mean the exercise of force or control
over individuals or particular groups by other individuals or groups.”3 Michael Mann “…
emphasizes ´four sources of social power: ideological, economic, military and political
power`.”4 We can relate these sources of power in a network where, in Nineteen Eighty-Four,
we recognize these social powers through the use and abuse of Ideological and Repressive
State Apparatuses, where ideological power belongs to the former, and economic and military
power belongs to the latter, and where political power positions itself both as ideological and
repressive in nature. The power of the Party is diffused throughout the bureaucratic ministries.
The Ministry of Truth concerns itself with the ideological power, the Ministry of Plenty with
the economic power, the Ministry of Peace with the military power, and the Ministry of Love
with the judicial power. All ministries are concerned with sustaining the political power.
 A definition of government and its exercises is necessary to understand the political
power situation of Oceania. According to Michel Foucault,
`Government´ refers… to certain less spontaneous exercises of power over others (to
those exercises that are more calculated and considered) and, particularly, to the use
and invention of technologies for the regulation of conduct… government, as Foucault
describes it, aims to regulate the conduct of others or oneself.

“The regulation of conduct” is the quintessential element of Party politics. The government
“manages” the people of Oceania on the “macro” and “micro” levels. As Foucault argues,
“the principles of political action and those of personal conduct can be seen as being
intimately related.” The government constructs a reality where the population, in the case of
Nineteen Eighty-Four, can only choose to accept the absolutism of the Party or else commit

“Thought Crime.”
The Party exercises a distorted pastoral power. In Foucault’s terminology there are
four stages to pastoral power. Firstly, “[i]t is a form of power whose ultimate aim is to assure
individual salvation in the next world.” The Party incorporates individuals into the collective,
and thus sets them “free” from the pain of individual failure. Timothy Melley terms this
“postmodern transference, the moment in which the power of individual agents is
imaginatively shifted to corporate entities.” In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the collective “frees”
the subject from individual restraints through an imposed postmodern transference. Secondly,
“pastoral power is not merely a form of power which commands; it must also sacrifice itself
for the life and salvation of the flock.” The Party’s engagement in the perpetual world war is
their contribution to the salvation of the population. The Party is “saving” the people from the
foreign and domestic threats. Thirdly, “[pastoral power] is a form of power which does not
look after just the whole community but each individual in particular, during his entire life.”
The Party looks after the community and all individuals through the omnipresent surveillance.
The population is always watched everywhere.
Finally, this form of power cannot be exercised without knowing the inside of
people’s minds, without exploring their souls, without making them reveal their
innermost secrets. It implies a knowledge of the conscience and an ability to direct it.

In this sense, knowledge over others becomes power over others. But what truly constitutes
the power discourse of Oceania as a pastoral power is the Party’s seeming ability to extend
the repression without giving anything back. “Pastoral power… is concerned more with the
welfare of its subjects than with their liberty.” This is also true of how the Party positions
itself outward to its subjects. However, the distorted pastoral power of the Party is concerned
with the abolishment of welfare of its subjects as well as the complete surrender of liberty.
“According to Foucault, power works through discourse to shape popular attitudes…
discourses can be used as a powerful tool to restrict alternative ways of thinking or speaking.”
Power is, then, shaped by the leading social discourse. In this sense, “… power becomes
much like the Althusserian concept of ideology; it apparently has no history and there is no
confusing outside it.”6 Power is thus historical and part of the historical discourse – but it is
important to remember that power shapes history, and history shapes power. Where once the
power discourse demanded a facilitation of power through democracy, and thus amongst the
people, the Party has secured a totalitarian power discourse. The Party has secured an
extensive knowledge of prior discourses of power. They know how power worked in the
Middle Ages, Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia. More importantly, they know why these
previous power discourses failed. O’Brien explains how the Party has studied the tyrants of
the past, discovered their weaknesses, and thus improved. O’Brien explains
In the Middle Ages there was the Inquisition. It was a failure. It set out to eradicate
heresy, and ended by perpetuating it… There were the German Nazis and the Russian
Communists… they knew, at any rate, that one must not make martyrs… [however]
The dead men had become martyrs and their degradation was forgotten… because the
confessions that they had made were obviously extorted and untrue. We do not make
mistakes of that kind. All the confessions that are uttered here are true. We make them
true. And above all we do not allow the dead to rise up against us.
By studying the despotic regimes of the past, the Party has constructed an impenetrable
defence for securing its existence.
O’Brien, who is our guide to understanding power in the eyes of the Party, explains
the brutal, yet simple, power discourse of the Party; they desire power for the sake of power.
“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a
means, it is an end… The object of power is power.” The exercise of power is thus power to
undermine and destroy. Power in the eyes of the Party is there to inflict an utter despotic and
nightmare version of society. Power, in Nineteen Eighty-Four is only exercised against the
population, while the population only exists to further accumulate the Party’s power, which
again is forced upon the population in the most brutal and inhumane methods possible. There
is no genuine pastoral concern in the Party’s regime, only terror. “Power is in inflicting pain
and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in
new shapes of your choosing.”

The State, or the Party, in Nineteen Eighty-Four is totalitarian. According to Foucault,

“the state is envisioned as a kind of political power which ignores individuals, looking only at
the interests of the totality or, should I say, of a class or a group among the citizens.” The
Party only looks after their own interests. The population suffers under the despotic nightmare
constructed by the Party, in which the population only exists to empower the Party. Outer
Party members suffer from long working hours, no leisure time, nor any room to gather their
strength or thoughts.

Totalitarianism is the major characteristic of Orwell’s dystopian nightmare. The

Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy characterises totalitarianism as the principle
of government according to which all institutional and private arrangements are
subject to control by the state. There are thus no autonomous associations, nor
is there any principled or legally recognized private/public distinction

We recognise these characteristics in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The private sphere is dissolved;

self-governing associations and autonomous people are steadily vanishing from the surface of
Oceania. Freedom is a vanishing element in Oceania as an inevitable by-product of
totalitarianism. In this context, Hannah Arendt argues that

Totalitarian domination… aims at abolishing freedom, even at eliminating human

spontaneity in general, and by no means at a restriction of freedom no matter how
tyrannical.

Nineteen Eighty-Four amplifies the repression in Arendt’s conception of a totalitarian regime,

as the Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four also aims at restricting freedom. Therefore, the Party is
more tyrannical than any other regime. Restricting the freedom of Party members is essential
for the Party to sustain itself. There can be no freedom amongst Party members, as freedom of
action can also create freedom of thought. The power of the Party hinges on an ever
increasing restriction of freedom, which is facilitated by the use of the omnipresent
surveillance of the telescreens. In this despotic society, autonomy dwindles and is
discouraged.
A totalitarian government uses a wide array of controlling mechanisms to control society.
Arendt writes:
Totalitarianism in power uses the state administration for its long-range goal of world
conquest and for the direction of the branches of the movement; it establishes the
secret police as the executors and guardians of its domestic experiment in constantly
transforming reality into fiction; and it finally erects concentration camps as special
laboratories to carry through its experiment in total domination.

The state administration is identified through the bureaucracy of the ministries. The secret
police is recognized as the Thought Police, and concentration camps and laboratories exist in
Oceania for torture and punishment for deviants, under the control of the Ministry of Love.
The Party will go to extreme lengths to ensure its dominion. “Orwell’s conception of
totalitarianism emphasizes the conjunction of the will to power of a ruling class and the
imposition of bureaucratic control over the whole of society…”7 Everything in Oceania is
governed by the Party, even the former “private institutions” such as the family, religion and
also schools are now incorporated into the state. We can, then, safely assume that the
totalitarian regime in Nineteen Eighty-Four is the scaffold for the dystopian society.
The Party and the bureaucracy of the ministries constitute the totalitarian and ironic
feature of Oceania’s society. “We find the contradictories of bureaucratic state power to be
liberty, individual freedom, and political democracy, and the contradictories of party
dictatorship to be justice, moral community, and social equality.”

A dystopian society is characterized by a nightmare vision of society (opp. utopia),

often as one dominated by a totalitarian or technological state… [T]wo of the
bestknown examples are Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four ( 1949) and Aldous Huxley's
Brave New World...

A dystopian society can, then, be characterized by Oceania’s distinguishing features,

such as the Party, the panoptic society (which I will discuss in the chapter “the
Panoptic society), newspeak, Thoughtcrime, the thought police, doublethink, and the
general bleakness of society. These dystopian characteristics are facilitated, in large,
by the perpetual war Oceania is engaged in.

Ideological and Repressive State Apparatuses:

 Explaining the society of
Dystopia and Utopia
Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World both characterise dystopian societies, but
the approaches are quite different.
In the Standardized societies depicted in both novels the media uphold conformity,
denying individuals their own privacy and personal feelings. Simultaneously, they
strengthen powers capable of controlling every single facet of their subjects’ life by
depriving them of all critical attitudes. Both societies have been emptied of a sense of
history and of memory of the past. In Airstrip One, the emptiness is filled by a host of
images of propaganda whereas in the fordian world it is shallowness and
sensationalism which nullify any possible counteraction, acting as disabling drugs.

Both novels are futuristic and technological, but Brave New World much more explicitly so.
In Brave New World, as in Nineteen Eighty-Four, all subjects are conditioned into a specific
place in society. In Brave New World, however, conditioning is a technological process. First
all individuals are “grown,” then they are genetically modified in terms of intelligence and
physical attributes. Secondly, they are modified hypnopeadically, which basically is an
advanced form of sleep hypnosis. Thirdly, the invention of the drug soma, which is a
happiness pill “similar to our Prozac, but nonprescriptive and taken continually by everyone,”
ensures compliance and stability amongst the citizens. “These technological advances are
represented as having profound effects. They induce mindless contentment.”The “mindless
contentment” of Party members is induced by less technological inventions, but equally
effective. Propaganda and indoctrination are the most vital apparatuses for the Party to secure
homogenous citizens.

In Brave New World, individuals are bred by design to fit their class on a genetic level,
as explained above. The lower classes, Deltas and Epsilons, are moreover “Bokanovskified”.
The Director of Hatcheries and Condition (the DHC) explains

[A] bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds,
and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one
grew before. Progress.
Deltas and Epsilons have literally lost their individuality, as they may have up to ninety-five
similar subjects. The DHC further explains that “… Bokanovsky’s Process is one of the major
instruments of social stability.”10 Social stability in Brave New World largely depends on the
happiness of people. All people engage in mindless sex games, an excessive consummation of
goods, and “religious” participation.11 People in Brave New World are never alone, as solitude
could make individuals reflect on their lives. The aim of soma is to induce a feeling of
happiness. The society of Brave New World is characterized by how “everyone is happy
nowadays.” Nineteen Eighty-Four is characterized by “the boot stamping on a human face.”
Victory Gin also secures social stability, but through a demoralization of subjects. In Oceania,
people are discouraged from following any instinct, especially the sex-instinct. No interaction
is encouraged by the Party. People live their lives in solitude, as personal relationships are
regarded as threats to the Party.
Although Nineteen Eighty-Four is a technological novel, the Party does not encourage
technology. Science has come to a halt. “In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old
sense, has almost ceased to exist.” Because technology would facilitate the means for higher
living standards, it reflects as a threat to the Party because of the plausible possibilities of
destabilization of society. According to Goldstein’s Book, “[i]n all the useful arts the world is
either standing still or going backwards.” Due to the nature of Oceania’s society, genuine
utopian ideals can only be found outside the paradigm of the Party. In the age of the Party,
humanity is only going backwards and the human spirit is deteriorating, and subsequently the
intentions of the Party are increasingly clearer. When the intentions of the Party are made
more explicit, they are also concealed from the public because of the people’s inability to
realize truth from propaganda, and thus they are locked into a situation where they cannot,
and dare not, oppose the Party.
Winston Smith, the protagonist of Nineteen Eighty-Four, is one of the few who dare
opposing the Party. We see Oceania through his eyes, beliefs, and actions. He is a common
middle-aged man with no great intellect. He is physically inferior, and suffers from a drinking
problem. In terms of appearance and intellect he is the quintessential Outer Party member.
Intellectual and physical mediocrity are desirable characteristics for Outer Party members
because of the then implausible realization of the falsifications composed by the Party.
Moreover, mediocrity is desirable because the Party does not seek progress; rather they work
towards a stabilization of the austere society we witness, as it is that society which empowers
the Party.
Because Outer Party members essentially run Oceania on a day-to-day basis, they
must not realize the discrepancies of Party propaganda and the actual situation of society.
Paradoxically, Winston too fails to see the power in Outer Party members. Because they
operate the country to such a great extent, their control is equally great. However, Outer Party
members’ submissiveness and mediocre intellect refrain them from discovering the greater
truths.
“In the background of every utopia there is an anti-utopia, the existing world seen
through the critical eyes of the utopia-composer, one might say conversely that in the
background of a dystopia there is a secret utopia.” The secret utopia of Nineteen

EightyFour exists in Winston’s memories of the past. Even his idealist rebellion with Julia is
emphasised by his longing for history and his dreams as his very own utopia. “for Orwell,
the`best,´ or more accurately, the least bad, imaginable arrangement of human affairs can be
found only in the past… In this way, Nineteen Eighty-Four becomes an example of
Mannheim’s “conservative utopia.” Winston’s personal utopian vision is embedded in his
memories, and expressed in his opposition to the Party. The utopia he seeks is not a utopia in
the sense of great ideals or a moral high ground.

His heart leapt. Scores of times [Julia] had done it: he wished it had been hundreds –
thousands. Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope…
Anything to rot, to weaken, to undermine!

Rather, his utopia is that of a pre- and post totalitarian, and simultaneously a pre- and
postParty ideal. Winston finds a utopia in his memory and his dream of a non-totalitarian
future. For Winston, memory and free thought, combined with a world void of the Party or
any other repressive regime constitute the most important factors of his utopia. In his diary,
Winston explains the utopia he dreams of

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different
from one another and do not live alone – to a time when truth exists and what is done
cannot be undone.
In Winston’s longing for heterogeneity, the past and free thought constitute part of his utopia.
Although he didn’t have a happy childhood and he only remember bits and pieces from it, his
utopia reaches out to a similar world. This world is his belief in the future without the Party.

The post totalitarian space of the “author” is truly utopian – it is a “no-place” that cannot exist
given the sociological reality of Oceania but at the same time does exist and, by fact of its
existence, asserts that a revolutionary overthrow of totalitarianism has taken place.

The overthrow of the Party characterizes a contradictory statement to the dystopian society.
As Resch argues
Orwell’s utopian frame negates the pessimistic “end of history” presented from within
the dystopian frame of Oceania, but it does so by an ideological leap of faith rather
than by advancing a plausible theory of historical transition.
The leap of faith is that there are more men like Winston and Julia. The hope is that the Proles
and Outer Party members will awaken from their submissiveness. However, the post
totalitarian utopia of Winston is not vivid enough to displace the explicitly dismal world he
lives in. Oceania in the year of 1984 is a sad and grimy world.

Down in the street little eddies of wind were whirling dust and torn paper into spirals,
and though the sun was shining and the sky a harsh blue, there seemed to be no color
in anything, except the posters that were plastered everywhere. The
blackmoustachio’d face gazed down from every commanding corner.

The dust is all that is left of the history Winston so longs for. The colour is gone and has been
replaced by a world of darkness, amplified by the “dark eyes” of Big Brother. The greyness of
the landscape signifies the soulless, austere, and bleak world of the masses. Orwell’s
dystopian nightmare is like the land of the living dead. There is no longer any explicit
individuality. No one dares to be different. Party members go about their daily routines as
grey masses, never questioning their lives. A world of utter homogeneity is a world of
absolute lifelessness. “The ideological project of Nineteen Eighty-Four is to represent the
destruction of human individuality and human community by a totalitarian state.”
 Winston’s physical and mental health illustrates the conditions of society. He suffers
from a “varicose ulcer above his right knee” and a drinking problem. His physical condition is
as poor as the condition of Airstrip One. All outer-Party members suffer from poor living
quarters and a wide-ranging necessity of consumer goods. Even so, the quintessential
characteristic of Orwell’s nightmare is not the desolate and grey landscape the people of
Oceania live in. In Homage to Catalonia, where Orwell chronicled his experiences from his
involvement in the Spanish Civil War, Orwell finds a near utopia in the war-marked streets of
Barcelona.

The town had a gaunt untidy look, roads and buildings were in poor repair, the streets
at night were dimly lit for fear of air-raids, the shops were mostly shabby and
halfempty. Meat was scare and milk practically unobtainable, there was a shortage of
coal sugar, and petrol, and a really serious shortage of bread… Yet so far as one could
judge the people were contented and hopeful… Human beings were trying to behave
as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.

To Orwell, the run-down and austere landscape of the early war-marked Barcelona was
paradoxically encouraging. He emphasized the humanity and equality that arose under those
conditions as noteworthy and heartening, despite the shortage of various consumer goods. The
despairing society in Nineteen Eighty-Four should thus not pose a threat to Orwell, but the
dismantled human consciousness and the leading regime would be utterly frightening to him.
Orwell, like Winston, believed in the human spirit over the collective forces. The soulless
landscape of Nineteen Eighty-Four as a literal interpretation is not all-powerful to Orwell, but
as an allegory for the soulless masses that inhabits that landscape it is utterly horrific.
The Last Man
"Oranges and lemons" say the Bells of St. Clement's
"You owe me five farthings" say the Bells of St. Martin's
"When will you pay me?" say the Bells of Old Bailey
"When I grow rich" say the Bells of Shoreditch
"When will that be?" say the Bells of Stepney
"I do not know" say the Great Bells of Bow
"Here comes a Candle to light you to Bed
Here comes a Chopper to Chop off your Head Chip chop
chip chop - the Last Man's Dead."

Winston personifies humanity, and embodies the values of man. These virtues are
illustrated in Winston’s actions and his writing in his diary. This chapter also discusses the
father and son, tormentor and tormented relationship that exists between O’Brien and
Winston. In the last part of this chapter I will conclude my arguments, and show how

Winston’s failure as a hero and as a man was inevitable.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was originally titled "The Last man of Europe,” which suggests
humanity, individuality and freedom. These concepts are shown through Winston who is the
last man. He is recognized by the liberal utopia he harbours consisting of freedom and
individual thought, but he is also identified by his inability to apply Doublethink. Winston as
“man” is guided by his ability to reason. He believes in what he sees – not what the Party tells
him to see. He believes in his own experiences over the experiences he is told to have, and
this is also what being the last man entails – a recognition of yourself as an autonomous
individual in opposition to the forces of the collective. Individuality creates men and women
instead of the automatons of the collective, who are so explicitly present in Nineteen Eighty
Four.
James A. Tyner points out that “Winston has repeatedly engaged in small acts of
resistance.” This is true due to his committing Thought Crimes and his persistent belief in
humanity, both of which in turn are, in part, due to his memories. Winston engaged in acts of
rebellion upon beginning his diary. He explained how it was now… because of this other
incident that he had suddenly decided to come home and begin the diary today.” The incident
he is referring to is the Two Minutes Hate session where O’Brien is present. This meeting, for
some unexplored reason, is what encourages Winston to begin writing the diary.
Up until this point there is little to suggest that Winston has engaged in any significant acts of
rebellion. Daring to write in his diary is thus the catalyst into his rebellious struggle against
the Party. The things that make Winston stand out against the incorporated masses of Oceania
are his writing and his memories. Winston concludes that he was a lonely ghost uttering a
truth that nobody could ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the
continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you
carried on the human heritage. Winston’s writing enables him to express and examine the
thoughts that occupy his stream of consciousness. Writing becomes a form of meditation
where a “happy” consequence is to stay sane. Moreover, his writing facilitates his
individuality as he is able to distance himself from the masses by creating something private
for him alone. By writing, Winston resists the Party dogma of no privacy. Moreover, by
writing the diary, Winston finds a way of expressing himself and hence knowing himself
better. By reading his thoughts he is better equipped to understand and realize himself. Also,
by writing he is creating something, which implicitly empowers him in a society where all
that is created is destroyed, material as well as history. His work in the Ministry of Truth has
enabled him to see the falsifications of historical documents, and thus he has, through
experience, seen the falsities of the Party. By writing, he is expressing what he has seen and
experienced. Winston writes in his diary on a regular basis. In so doing, he is creating a world
of his own where he is the master of his personal dreams in the same way that the Party is the
master of the day-to-day events of Oceania. He is the creator and the master of the message he
is creating. Winston’s world is no less real than the one created by the Party, only that
Winston’s offers a different version of it. Since Winston is, as far as the reader knows, the
only competitor to the overwhelming media of the Party, Winston’s character is given more
pathos and complexity. Orwell writes in “Why I write”The great mass of human beings are
not acutely selfish. After the age of about thirty they abandon the sense of being individuals at
all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery. But there is also the
minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and
writers belong in this class.
Winston as an author is characterized as a liberal individual, or an “inner-directed person” in
that he is “… the sole proprietor of his own person and capacities.” while most people in
Oceania belong to the other group of people who “live chiefly for others.” In Oceania, these
people live exclusively for the Party. They are born for the Party, they are educated by and for
the Party, they work for the Party, and eventually they die for the Party. The second thing that
separates Winston from the masses is his feeling of uniqueness. These feelings leave him
adrift in the stratified society of Oceania. He considers himself superior to other Outer Party
members such as Parsons and Syme. He also considers himself superior to the Proles because
of their inability to recognize themselves as a force. However, he is able to identify himself
with O’Brien. Resch argues that “as he is unconsciously repelled by the inferiority of the
Proles and other members of the Outer Party, Winston is unconsciously attracted to O’Brien,
from whom he seeks recognition as a fellow superior individual.” Winston’s agenda is to
refuse to spend his life as an automaton under the mercy of the Party. His relationship with
Julia epitomizes his individual quest, but also his search for family values. He realizes that the
Party’s agenda is to refuse him these freedoms. However, Resch argues that Winston’s
rebellion can also be read as one driven by egoistical factors. Winston’s quest for individual
freedom has been not a moral quest for a universal human freedom but an egoistical search
for his own personal freedom, a desire to escape from the oppressive domination of the Inner
Party above him without slipping into the ranks of the inferior masses of the Proles
below.Some degree of egoistical quest for freedom would be near impossible to avoid.
However, there is little to suggest that he is driven by these feelings. Winston’s initial
response to writing the diary was to whom was he writing it. Moreover, he recognizes himself
as dead once he begins writing, and thus part of his intention of writing the diary was to leave
a legacy for further generations to read. Winston is writing “for the future, for the unborn.”
He recognizes that the Party seeks to destroy him and all who choose to differ from the
orthodoxy constructed by the Party. Writing the diary, and commencing on the course of
rebellion is his way of fighting this orthodoxy that is imposed on him. In this sense, Winston
recognizes a conspiracy, which “… has come to signify a broad array of social controls.”I
have discussed these social controls in the previous chapters, and thus here it is only
necessary to mention that the conspiracy set forth by the Party seeks to
eliminate all Party members’ freedom, with little differences between Inner Party members
and Outer Party members, except in the way of access to material goods such as chocolate,
wine, and good housing. By realizing the conspiracy and what it does, and consequently
taking action in accordance to the conspiracy, Winston attains a higher level of individual
autonomy. Winston is amongst the few in Oceania who understand that the Party seeks to
undermine the individual and thus destroy any form of autonomy. In Oceania this loss is so
transparent that all should recognize it. However, by the installation of Doublethink in the
unconsciousness of Party members, they fail to identify the controlling mechanisms of the
Party, or rather their self-control transferred to the Party. Winston’s strong sense of
individuality enables him to see himself in opposition to the Party. He realizes a situation of
him versus them. Furthermore, his conspiratorial beliefs enable him to further strengthen his
autonomy. He understands the indoctrination the Party imposes on Party members, and
refuses to part-take in it.
Winston as the “Last Man” is thus a critical reflection of a growing tendency of what
Orwell saw as a consequence of a totalitarian regime – a transfer of agency to the
organization. In this sense, Orwell warned against what Melley terms a postmodern
transference “… in which agency is “transferred” from the autonomous individual to a
discursive or social system.” Orwell’s experiences in “Shooting an Elephant,” describes how
individual power is easily transformed to the forces of the collective.
Suddenly i realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people
expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing
me forward, irresistibly… Seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I
was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces
behind.”
Orwell became conscious of the transference of his agency to the collective, much like
Winston is conscious of the forces that are trying to turn him into “an absurd puppet.” The
element of postmodern transference in Oceania is supported by O’Brien who asserts that an
individual should merge “… himself in the Party so that he is the Party, then he is allpowerful
and immortal.” The Party is thus conscious of encroaching on the individuality of Party
members, and moreover that they are proud of it and regard it as a positive and natural
development for any individual.
Winston’s distinct feelings of segmentation, and quest for individual liberty, are direct
results of his autonomy in a society that does not tolerate individual freedom. Furthermore, by
realizing that there is a conspiracy and that it seeks to destroy his individuality and his
freedom, Winston finds that he must fight the organisation behind this. It is in this context that
Winston declares a silent opposition against the Party carried forth by the ideals of a better
world found in the past and in the post Party future. “To understand one’s relation to the
social order through conspiracy theory, in other words, is to see oneself in opposition to

`society.´”

By seeing himself in opposition to society, Winston is embarking on a journey in

which the result is an inevitable alienation from his “comrades.” Because most other Party
members are “successfully” incorporated into the collective, Winston chooses relative
solitude, except for his relationship with Julia. She is, however, not of the rebellious character
Winston is. Her rebelliousness is based on a practical mode of surviving, and indeed keeping
her individuality.
She spent an astonishing amount of time in attending lectures and demonstrations,
distributing literature for the Junior Anti-Sex League, preparing banners for Hate
Week, making collections for the savings campaign, and such-like activities. It paid,
she said; it was camouflage. If you kept the small rules you could break the big ones.

She does not believe that the Party can ever be overpowered, nor is she governed by a
personal utopian vision like Winston. Although she hates the Party, she is not a hero in the
sense of Winston. Her drive is truly egoistical as her rebellion is of an individual nature. She
has no particular interest in the Brotherhood, or in the utopian ideals of Winston. “Any kind
of organised revolt against the Party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid.
The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same.” Julia is driven by an
egoistical and practical discourse, whereas Winston is governed by his ideals.
Foucault argues that “Where there is power, there is resistance; and this resistance is
never in a position of exteriority in relation to power.” Winston’s resistance is thus a direct,
and inevitable, result of the society constructed by the Party. He, as the Last Man, is trying to
maintain his autonomy, but ultimately and inevitably fails. Ironically, his resistance is no
more than a charade. Winston’s rebellion has been dictated and facilitated by O’Brien from
when Winston commenced writing in his diary. O’Brien exclaims that he has been watching
Winston for seven years, but it is only recently that Winston has committed acts momentous
enough for the Thought Police to handle him. Winston was no more than O’Brien’s Guinea
pig, his project of the last man.

Winston is ultimately identified as the “last man” by O’Brien: “If you are a man,
Winston, you are the last man” O’Brien further culminates this declaration by showing
Winston the terrible state he is. Winston as the last man is a terrible sight. “Except for his
hands and a circle of his face, his body was grey all over with ancient, ingrained dirt.”16 He
has become as lifeless as the grey landscape described in the opening paragraphs of the novel.
Winston, and consequently the last man, is rotting away. Moreover, his moral standards are
presented as being as low as those of the Party as O’Brien plays for him a tape where Winston
“… heard himself promising to lie, to steal, to forge, to murder, to encourage drug-taking and
prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases, to throw vitriol in a child’s face.” Winston’s
physical condition is an allegory for the condition of humanity – the humanity which Orwell
so greatly feared would terminate under a totalitarian rule. The “ancient, ingrained dirt” on
Winston’s body indeed symbolizes the Last Man, and consequently humanity, under
totalitarian rule as a relic from the past.
Winston was most likely always a rebellious character as he was never totally
indoctrinated into the collective. Writing in his diary was an outlet for all the rebellious
thoughts that had occupied his mind for the last seven years, which is the time O’Brien has
observed him.
`Don’t worry, Winston; you are in my keeping. For seven years I have watched over
you. Now the turning-point has come. I shall save you, I shall make you perfect.´
[Winston] was not sure whether it was O’Brien’s voice; but it was the same voice that
had said to him, `we shall meet in the place where there is no darkness,´ in that other
dream, seven years ago.

Somehow O’Brien managed, seven years ago, to make such a strong impact on Winston that
he is having recurrent dreams of him, and also experiencing great admiration towards O’Brien
as an Inner Party member and intellectual superior, but also as a conspirator, where Winston
imagines O’Brien as an unorthodox character – a part of the Brotherhood. In the treacherous
society of Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is inevitable that Winston will be betrayed, interrogated
and tortured by O’Brien. It is in this sense that O’Brien steps forward as Winston’s nemesis in
that he is able to exploit Winston’s feelings of admiration and love, and utilize those feelings
to destroy Winston.
Winston as man is negated and destroyed by O’Brien’s presence in room 101, the
interrogation room. However, Raymond Williams argues that Winston never was a man.
Winston Smith is not like a man at all – in consciousness, in relationships, in the capacity for
love and protection and endurance and loyalty. He is the last of the cutdown figures – less
experienced, less intelligent, less loyal, less courageous than his creator – through whom
rejection and defeat can be mediated. However, if Winston is Orwell, as James A. Tyner
argues, then Orwell’s portrayal of Winston as “less experienced, less intelligent, less loyal,
less courageous,” epitomizes the ultimate, and inevitable, failure of the autonomous
individual under totalitarian rule.

Williams’ surrender only further illuminates the hopelessness of Winston as a tragic character,
and his impossible quest for freedom, which is further shown by the superiority of
O’Brien as the personification of Party ideals.
O’Brien is an ambiguous character for both Winston and the reader. Winston regards
him as his protector and somewhat of a father figure, but also as his tormentor. Paradoxically
these roles are intertwined, and appear natural to Winston. He accepts O’Brien as his
tormentor, but still admires him. “The peculiar reverence for O’Brien, which nothing seemed
able to destroy, flooded Winston’s heart again. How intelligent, he thought, how intelligent.”18
O’Brien understands Winston, and there exists an implicit sympathy between the two
characters, which also lends sympathy to O’Brien for the reader. Resch claims that
“O’Brien’s superiority negates rather than validates the tragic dimensions of Winston’s defeat
precisely because he is not the antithesis of Winston, he is Winston – at a more advanced
stage of development.” O’Brien has observed Winston for seven years, and thus knows him
almost better than Winston himself. O’Brien exhibits a great knowledge of Winston’s intellect
and his reactions. Rather than negating Winston’s relationship with O’Brien, it further
facilitates the admiration Winston feels towards him.
Winston does not remember his father. In his quest for family values, and utopian
ideals outside the paradigm of the Party, he seeks O’Brien as a father figure. While
imprisoned in the Ministry of Love, waiting for his doom, Winston finds himself dreaming.
He dreamed a great deal all through this time, and they were always happy dreams. He was in
the Golden Country, or he was sitting among enormous, glorious, sunlit ruins, with his
mother, with Julia, with O’Brien – not doing anything, merely sitting in the sun, talking of
peaceful things.
The “glorious, sunlit ruins” symbolizes the ruins of totalitarianism and the Party, and hence
the dream is Winston’s post totalitarian utopia. His dream is that of a family, another relic
from the past, but of which O’Brien is a member along with Julia.
 Winston’s physical relationship with Julia is also part of his awakening in terms of an
explicit rebellious course. The sexual act constitutes a moment where Julia and Winston, as
two individuals, collaborate on undermining the Party. Because of their jobs, they are able to
learn from each other, and thus they are able to understand more of the elaborate dystopian
qualities the Party presses upon the population. However, they are both undeniably convinced
they cannot succeed in any endeavor to overthrow the Party, and that they will eventually be
caught by the Thought Police. Winston’s heroism originates from his ideological belief in
humanity, as all of Winston’s actions derive from ideology found in his memories, and belief
in a better world. He believes in “the spirit of Man,” which is his belief in a principle that the
Party cannot defeat – a belief in the human spirit as universal and unbeatable. He recognizes
his inferiority to the Party, but still believes in asserting himself before the constructed
doctrine of the Party imposed on him. His heroism is further facilitated by his ideological
“martyrdom.” After writing in the diary, and after engaging in the physical relationship with
Julia, he recognizes himself and Julia as dead. In this darkest hour he sets forth to entangle
himself further in the web of rebellion by engaging the Brotherhood through O’Brien. This is
the culmination of his rebellious quest, and also his ultimate failure. His heroism is negated
by his obvious defeat by O’Brien, but also by introducing Julia to the Thought Police. In his
rebellious course, he has made Julia his accomplice, and thus she must suffer the
consequences of Winston’s rebellion. Although Winston tries to rectify the situation by never
stopping loving Julia, he fails in room 101 when, in order to save himself, he shouted “`Do it
to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip
her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me! ´” Winston’s surrender is complete. He is thrust into
the arms of Big Brother. It is through this defeat that Resch argues that the fact is that
Winston cares only about himself.
His refusal to love Big Brother and his resistance to the party’s domination is, at bottom an
egoistic drive indistinguishable from O’Brien’s submission to Big Brother and his pleasure
in destroying Winston’s individuality.Clearly, the final act of surrender is driven by his
egoistical desires. Also, Winston’s inability to recognize himself with either Party members
or the Proles separates him from everyone else. However, his initial martyrdom and desire to
write his diary to the future negates the notion of a purely egoistical drive argued by Resch.
Rather, all rebels are egoistical in part that they also wish the current situation to change for
their benefit, but for Winston, he also wishes this for all. He longs for the freedom of Proles,
but with intellect. His dream is of a utopian individual of Prole freedom and intellect of an
Inner Party member!
Conclusion: The Last Man Resurrected
Orwell’s nightmare conclusion epitomizes his dystopian frame. Joseph Heller’s
Catch22, however, suggests an alternate possibility. Nineteen Eighty-Four ends with Winston
sitting in the Chestnut Café, drinking more than ever. He has finally learned to love Big
Brother. In Catch-22, Yossarian sits in the chestnut tree, overlooking a funeral. He is naked,
removed of his uniform. He has taken the physical and conscious step out of uniformity,
which Winston never succeeded in doing. For Winston, the Chestnut Café is the culmination
of his defeat. For Yossarian, the chestnut tree signifies “the tree of life… and of knowledge of
good and evil, too.” Yossarian has managed to escape the dystopian society of the military as
he makes the decisive step to leave it all behind. By so doing, Timothy Melley argues that
“[Yossarian] merely abandons his social commitments. It is in this sense that Yossarian is an
antisocial character.” However, Melley has omitted Yossarian’s search for Kid Sister who
functions as, sort of, the negation of Nineteen Eighty-Four’s Big Brother.
In Heller’s novel, the obvious contrast between the Orwellian Big Brother and “Kid
Sister” iterates Yossarian as more of an individual than Winston. She is the embodiment of
family, while Big Brother is the antithesis of family in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Yossarian, in
this sense, is also more successfully connected to the collective than Winston who fails in all
his exploits of a collective solidarity. Yossarian is furthermore driven by strong feelings of
what Timothy Melley terms agency panic, which is an intense anxiety about an apparent loss
of autonomy or self control – the conviction that one’s actions are being controlled by
someone else, that one has been “constructed” by powerful external agents.
Yossarian has realized that he, and everyone else, is being controlled by the military, and how
they are neglected as individuals. Although Winston is also driven by his individual beliefs,
he first succumbs to agency panic in room 101 when he realizes the extent of the controlling
mechanisms. However, room 101 terminates Winston’s individuality. Here he finally
embraced Big Brother; he has consciously surrendered his ideology, which formerly drove
him. Yossarian’s search for Kid Sister culminates in a search for family values opposite of the
“Big Brother society” of the army. It is in this sense that Yossarian carries forth the legacy
started by Winston, but which Winston could never manage to fulfil. Yossarian is, in this
sense, the “Last Man.”
Winston’ failure as an individual, as a man, and as a hero was inevitable. In Alan
Moore’s V for Vendetta, V’s failure is also inevitable, because of society’s nature, which is
much like that of Nineteen Eighty-Four. However, V recognized himself as an idea. “Did you
think to kill me? There’s no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There’s only an idea.
Ideas are bullet proof.” V was inevitably killed, but not ultimately. He lived on as an idea, but
more importantly, he lived on in the exploits of the girl, Evey Hammond. Neither Heller nor
Moore ended their novels conclusively. Both novels end with an ideological victory, but at
the expense of something else. Yossarian abandoned his friends for them to fight for
themselves, but he abandoned them to seek the values of family and humanity the military
was stripping him off. V as an individual and as a man died, but his victory was that of
engaging the masses. He was an awakening. Winston, however, because of his complete
surrender to the Party, surrendered himself as an idea and all that constituted him as a man.
The only hope in Nineteen Eighty-Four is in the appendix on Newspeak, where Newspeak
and the Party are narrated as relics from the past, but the hope in Orwell’s novel must be
characterized by what

Resch characterises as an “ideological leap of faith.”

Winston’s failure as the last man and as a hero is noteworthy. It signifies Orwell’s
despairing outlook on the future. Most memorable, however, in Nineteen Eighty-Four is
Orwell’s design of the omnipotent leader Big Brother. The term Big Brother has stayed with
us into the 21st century. He has become the epitome of the Orwellian paradigm. But what was
for Orwell the most horrific symbol of a regime of terror, has now come to signify a culture of
reality television. Where Big Brother once personified evil and dehumanizing tendencies of
society, he now is celebrated as innovative and entertaining. In the reality-show “Big Brother”
it is considered “cool” to be under the gaze of Big Brother – the all pervading surveillance
and scrutiny. In this sense, perhaps we too are reaching the final act for Winston: We are
learning to love Big Brother.
As we are learning to love Big Brother, we are failing to realize how the increasing
surveillance, security, and indeed virtual reality pressing upon us via the Internet, is creating a
forecast for a Panoptic society of our world. Traffic cameras function as Panopticons. They
observe the roads, but it is impossible to know if they are observing all the time, or if the
surveillance they offer is random. Through our ever-increasing use of media such as
television and internet, we are subjected to the mercy of those who mediate. We cannot, or at
least should not, be convinced that what is broadcasted to us is the only truth. Our use of the
internet can be traced; our habits and our interests can easily be observed in the virtual reality.
Consequently, our escalating use of technology and media directs us into a situation where we
impose a virtual Panopticon. Orwell’s design for the Panoptic society of Nineteen EightyFour
is thus not as far fetched, albeit more horrific. Furthermore, Orwell’s vision of a world in
continuous war is also precariously close to the world situation today.
Today we are also learning to accept a state of war. After 9/11, the world has been
engaged in a continuous war. We slowly learn that increased security is an “evil” necessity,
and that everyone can be a threat to society. Bomb threats and bomb attacks occur randomly
in the Western world today. Especially the US and the UK are subjected to these attacks,
which are so difficult to defend against. The frequency of bomb attacks in Iraq is starting to
sound like faint blows to the Western societies – a brief anecdote on the six o’clock news.
During the “war on terror” it is noticeable that governments become more absolute,
although not totalitarian. The increased surveillance is one stage of this development. Risking
the lives of soldiers fighting on alien ground, for a reason that is becoming more and more
obscure is another. A recent survey revealed that 63% of the American people want all troops
in Iraq home by the end of 2008. President Bush, however, does not share these sentiments,
and thus the “war on terror’s” purpose of protecting and serving the people seems distant.
Rather, the “war on terror” resembles the Cold War, where the war was over ideology. The
situation of “the war on terror” is growing progressively closer to Orwell’s projections of
despotism and perpetual war.
People such as Winston who dare to question their existence, and the actions of the
government are needed today also. Without individuality and humanity the world will stop
progressing. Through complete uniformity there is no progress, as we can no longer learn
from each other. Orwell’s vision of a future devoid of human relationships, autonomy and
choice, should echo in the present so that we embrace the multifaceted society we currently
live in, and instead of impoverishing that society, we should welcome those who have the
courage to be different, and appreciate those who dare to speak their minds.
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Orwell, George, “Shooting and Elephant,” in Orwell, George Shooting an Elephant and
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Orwell, George, “Why I Write,” in Orwell, George, Shooting an Elephant, Penguin Books,
London, 2003

Orwell, George, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Penguin Books, London, 1987

Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Schocken, Random House, New York, 2004

Althusser, Louis, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” in Althusser, Louis, Lenin
and
Philosophy and other essays, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1971

Bilton, Tony. Et al. Introductory sociology, 4th edition, Palgrave Macmillan, Hampshire,
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